


Rib From Adam

by Inaudible (HankTalking)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Past Abuse, Ruthless (Mass Effect), Self-Harm, Sibling Bonding, Spacer (Mass Effect), Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:22:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25274614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HankTalking/pseuds/Inaudible
Summary: “I remember Jack,” you seethe, the words oozing out of you like black liquorish. He stares at you, uncomprehending, but you know the truth and you’re going to make him squirm. “I wrote those dossiers. Rasa told you it was her but I did the legwork, and Iknowwhat Jackwas. That’s why you like us so much, isn’t it?” You barely hold a strand of hysterical laugher. “You get to find broken things andfixthem.”
Relationships: Jack | Subject Zero/Male Shepard, Male Shepard & Male Shepard Clone (Mass Effect), Maya Brooks/Shepard Clone
Kudos: 7





	Rib From Adam

**Author's Note:**

> work of fiction, introducing a clone character: isn’t this _evil_? how perverse that we’ve made a twisted version of this good character, don’t you just _hate_ it?  
> me: that’s nice they’re my kid now

She tells you, often, between best laid plans while the lamps are too low and the whisper too near your ear, what will happen if Lazarus wins. It is detailed, and true, and it chills you as the words curl around the shell of your ear. This is a fear is entwined with your very existence, seeded by your creation, something that can never be shaken from the back of your cerebrum where the thin little tendrils bury themselves too deep to ever let go.

It is your motivation, because you know what happens when they find out you’re still alive. It keeps you quiet as you flip through dossiers, putting fragments of old ANN stories together with Omega rumors and Blue Suns internal reports, your mind thrumming with a single throughline. You’ve given the fear its power. You do not want to die.

So when a hand—gloved and unrecognizable—extends down to you, you are not pride. The only thing you are is years of terror coiled into an unpurposed body. When the hand reaches down and offers to pull you out from the uncaring lights, to trade in his unknown for your gruesome certainty, you take it.

* * *

The unannounced receding of your cell door startles you. You’re leaned over your hands, any other position impossible on your bolted bench. There is light from without but not within, so when he stands there, helmet gone and armor embellishing his shoulders, he is just a dark spot against a white world. You raise a palm to blot it out, the other one coming along for the ride.

“What are you doing here?” you ask, startled into colorlessness, not even managing a bitter inflection in time to give it shape.

He crosses the threshold, and your sight adjusts. “I wasn’t lying when I said there would be an after, and I’m not someone who breaks promises. You’re coming with us.”

Hm. You’d come to accept that whole spiel above the Citadel was merely a convincing pitch in the heat of the moment, an effective way to get you to turn yourself in. Funnily enough, up until C-Sec came and slapped on the cuffs, you’d almost bought it—at least in the confused and tangled part of your brain that desperately wanted to live.

Now, even that’s gone, only thing left is an empty buzz where belief should be. “I don’t think that’s likely,” you say blankly.

“Do you _want_ to stay here?” he asks.

You squint. “You’re never going to convince C-Sec to let me go anywhere. The Alliance won’t be happy with a lot things I am today.” Clone, attempted murderer, war criminal, traitor, though you doubt you can officially commit treason against a government you never legally belonged to. They’ll still find a way to saddle you with it.

“You don’t give me enough credit,” he says. “I talk to Bailey half an hour ago. You’re being released on Spectre authority.”

His omni-tool glows, and you see him splashed in orange while he stands less than a foot from you, disabling the cyberlock on your cuffs. Then they’re off, and you scrutinize between him and the now powerless bindings. It feels like you should be impressed about the weight he’s thrown around, but that tangled part of your brain is still choked with weeds, and it makes it hard to care. Go with him or don’t, and if you had spine it might be an actual choice. You should at least offer up some resistance, formulate a plan like you heard Rasa do back in the hanger bay, slide into some persona that will give you more dignity that a dead man walking. But Rasa never taught you to be anything else but what you are, so you stand, peer at him, and follow him again out into the artificial sunlight.

* * *

The children make the Normandy difficult to bare.

You haven’t met many, wouldn’t like to again, wouldn’t even count this as a meeting as you avoid the places they congregate. Their chaperone is just as loud, messing around and with them, half teacher and half untamed thing herself. Lazarus is always where she is, smiling more than you’ve ever seen him, joy reaching his eyes in ways Alliance propaganda never managed to capture. You wonder idly if they’re fucking.

Then you remember you don’t have to wonder. You’ve read these files a hundred times, both Rasa’s and your research, committed every detail of resurrection to memory. At the time it seemed unimportant, a morsel of gossip to file away while you were busy memorizing how to chew and what council-controlled planets were the most exposed. Now you observe, and can’t help but feel two years of irrelevant knowledge _blister_.

The Normandy doesn’t allow you the luxury of keeping to the shadows: even the most meandering bend is scorched, the nooks and crannies flattened into military spartaness. You cannot _slink_ , though the other Spectre accuses you under her breath when she thinks you can’t hear. You do hear, as well as the murmured warnings Lazarus gives in response. Still, you feel her eyes on you whenever she’s near, and the AI’s eyes whenever she isn’t.

There may be nowhere to hide, but _pretending_ you can is within your means. The hanger bay is easiest; it is exposed without the walls of cargo and the sound of gunfire, but even still you find an area behind the dormant UT-47 you think is free from sensors. There’s a bunk not too far, meant for an on-call shuttle pilot, one that would be claimed if Cortez weren’t so gun-shy about sleeping outside the pods.

You don’t mind him. Cortez. Or even Vega, for that matter. It’s a pattern you’ve noticed, that anyone from before the Alpha Relay is willing to shoot on sight, even the AI, though the synthetic is a lot better at hiding it. New blood, however, is still undecided on whether they want to kill you or not.

“Hey. Lookalike. You up for a match?”

You’re there, further from your nest than you usually are in the no man’s land of the hanger, but still there within what you usually consider a hostility free zone. Conversation, of course, is an act of war, but everything in Vega’s posture speaks of ease, or at the very least confidant casualness. Cortez has an eyebrow raised, but only for a moment, then he too drops into affability.

“Match.” They don’t let you have a gun. You’ve never noticed how difficult it is to stand straight without something in your hands.

“Yeah, match.” He’s up, no longer leaned against the procurement terminal, but rolling his shoulders as he paces around the gym floor. You recognize the stance, the way his hands float to his chin, bringing memories of boxing matches from the feed. “C’mon, I know you like a good fight. Only thing anyone knows about you. Let off some steam.”

This is…some sort of test. You don’t know what kind, or what Vega wants, or why Cortez is just watching when usually he’ll comment on just about anything Vega does. Circling closer, you don’t let your shoulders relax, sizing them both up. Is this to see if you’ll back down? Prove you’re no threat?

That hardens your teeth against one another, and you set one foot on the gym floor.

“I don’t see any gloves anywhere,” you say. Your hands flex. You wish for the hundredth time you had a datapad to hold.

His fists, and the corners of his mouth, curl up. “This isn’t some grudge match, Loco. We’re just a few soldiers cutting loose.”

“That isn’t my name.”

That, apparently, initiates the match. He throws a punch. Your hands, only beginning to mirror his, do not put up an admirable defense. He catches you in the jaw, and laughs. “No? Commander didn’t like it either.”

“Maybe don’t give him a concussion within the first fifteen seconds,” Cortez says from beyond where your vision swims. “Commander’s also not going to like you breaking his clone.”

Hand to hand. You know this, you’ve bled this. You stand, surprised so see Vega waiting for you. Stupid. Rasa would have pressed while she had the upper hand.

You swing, you swing again. Both come against Vega’s forearms and he smirks, “yow! Alright, alright I get it, you got fire. How about _Bandito_ then? That work for you?”

But you’re ignoring him now—him and the peanut gallery—as your swings grow hotter, remember the paths they’re supposed to take through the air, the lines they make in your body. Vega gets you again, but then he doesn’t and you land your first hit.

“Still think this was a good idea?” Cortez asks, not bothering to hide to his amusement.

Vega’s still cocky, but only on his lips, and you can see the concentration forming behind performance.

Each of his swings meet your blocks, and you get him hard across the chin. He’s losing ground now and you pursue, and you get him again, and then again. You no longer count. The focus is faltering underneath him, sweat leaking off his face and stirring the blood underneath his nose and you press your advantage: his ribs where you know you’ve struck him so many times that they’re bruised, his guard where it’s getting sloppy, your mind on fire because _you can never guarantee that, never rely on that, if Lawson came through that door right now and you didn’t have your gun, are you just going roll over and die like some-_

You whole body jerks in pain. There is something on your back and your knees are on the floor even though you don’t remember them getting there. There is a voice—Cortez, it takes a second—shouting, “tell them to get down here _now!_ ”

Cortez has your in arm bar. Immediately, you lurch backwards, but your realization only earns you a shout of pain as you twist the wrong way, and he tightens the lock further. There is blood rushing in your ears and the AI buzzing instructions and a lot of wet on the floor beneath you, and your mind is still fire fire fire-

Vega is lying nearby. You’re pretty sure you were just been beating the shit out him.

There is shouting and you are still trying to throw Cortez off you when Lazarus’s voice cuts through. “Hey! _Hey!_ Stop th-”

Whatever he says next is cut off in a wave of blue. Cortez slides away and you are suspended, immobile, hovering off the ground as your muscles lock up. You have a view now, once of an audience, and the Shadow Broker with her hand raised in damnation.

“Hey!” Lazarus demands again, but this time to get your attention. It is hard to give, with your heartbeat climbing and the loss of your most basic bodily control striking every nerve in your system. “I’m going need you to calm down, alright? Hey! Look at me.”

You could, but your pupils ping around inside your skull faster than you can think.

He turns. “Put him down. I can’t get through to him like this.”

“With all due respect Commander,” the Shadow Broker says, voice clipped, so many orders given through it, all disguised, all followed. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Someone once told me that when they say ‘with all due respect’ they really mean ‘kiss my ass’.”

“Commander. I would never.”

Their eyes lock. She studies him, then you, then where you see Vega trying to sit up while the ship medic pushes him back down. She draws her hand into a fist.

Lazarus is in front of you before you touch the ground. You try to shuffle back but won’t let you, grabbing your arms and saying, “I don’t know what the hell that was, but you need to get a hold of yourself. Nod if you understand me.”

You want to take a moment to remember how to breathe again. It feels like there are broken bits of bone rattling around inside you, asking you to take a swing at him and get him out of your face. Instead, you nod, because that is easier.

He nods back. Mirrors, too many. “Okay, that’s something. Can you tell me that you’re out of it now?”

 _It_. Does he even know what he means by _it?_ You still want to beat him senseless against a steel wall and you’ve read enough of his life to know he has no experience with hostage negotiation. He’s talking from his ass, things about existence he has no hope of understanding, and you channel every fiber of hatred you have for him as you stare him down and say, “yeah.”

No sigh of relief, but he does breathe hot out his nose. The grip loosens, and he turns to the crowd.

“What the hell Shepard?”

The teacher is here. But no, not just a teacher. You remember her now, putting together her dossier, her escape record, her experiment results. It just took time to reach back that far, to assign a file with a face.

“Jack, not the time.” He’s agitated, half overseeing you and half the stretcher they’ve brought for Vega.

“You didn’t say you were keeping it on the fucking _ship_.” Subject Zero crackles. Some of the nameless crew shift on their feet, and even the Shadow Broker observes her out the corner of her eye. “Have you just been letting it stay here like a varren in your fucking basement?”

“Jack,” he repeats. He scans at the empty area behind you. “Look, we’re just going to go back here and talk. Nobody punch a hole in anything while I’m gone.”

He’s pulling gently on your arm to bring you deeper into the hanger, and if it’s a choice between Lazarus and Zero—then it’s a hard one. But your blood still doesn’t feel like it’s resumed normal flow quite yet, so you don’t fight as he brings you to where everything isn’t stained quite so red. As you go, you hear her gripe, “great. Off to have a chat with the Cerberus failed abortion. Fucking great.”

He lets you sit down inside the UT-47.

It feels wrong him being here, soiling it with his presence, but you were stupid if you thought you could keep sanctuary forever. The defilement hangs. He says, “should we talk about that?”

You say nothing.

“I can’t have you beating up my squad every time they piss you off. It’s probably going to happen a lot.”

You scratch at your ripped open knuckles, and again say nothing.

His gaze is downwards at you, always, always, and you force yourself not to turn away. You are not for his judgment, and you will not be your own defendant. You tell him only, “I won’t.”

“Good,” he relaxes, and you allow yourself to look away. With a tilt of his head, he adds, “I trust you.”

You stop picking at your knuckles. Then, you resume, and pretend you hadn’t.

He glances out the blackened windows, at the scene unfolding. “I’m sorry about her.”

There is memory stirring inside you, something about her in particular, if you can remember her story in full. “We cannot blame ourselves for the war our parents start,” you say. He blinks at you. You pretend not to care. “Subject Zero never learned to walk away.”

“Her name is Jack.”

For a moment, both he and you think you will say nothing. Then, without timbre, you repeat, “Jack.”

He lets it hang in the muffled shuttle. After a moment, guardedly, he asks, “what should I call you?”

“Whatever you want.”

“What did Brooks call you?”

“Rasa,” you bite sharply, though not in answer to his question. “Her name is Rasa.”

He pauses. Not long, though, and asks, “what did Rasa call you?”

A grim line straightens your mouth, iron or copper, something unpleasant and metal that sits unset on your tongue. “Minuteman.”

“Should I call you that?”

You are alone. You should be formulating a plan, mulling over your next move, making do with the resources at hand while you plan to kill the man in front of you in his sleep. Rasa would have had every person on this ship in motion by now, singing to her tune without even realizing it. She would have a mask and an angle and something to stand for.

Left to your own devices, you cannot even decide an objective.

Left to your own devices, you gather no data, you make no connections.

The other Spectre pulled Lazarus up by the scruff of his neck, and the Archangel dragged them both to safety, and you knew you were going to die and she left you to your own devices.

You tell him plainly and with no quarter, “don’t.”

* * *

The scuffling, noisy, biotic children are deposited on an Alliance cruiser along with their instructor, and you are finally given time to think. There is still the tail end of Jack, and you latch on to what you know and what you remember and what has been bothering you. But then you run out of thought, so you examine other methods of egress, and you only need a few seconds at the Normandy’s terminal to stir your hunch into viscous vindication. This part of your worth you have never doubted; you can follow threads, make connections, _damn you’re good at this_ whispered at the back of your neck while her arms criss-cross in front of you. The AI locks you out after less than a minute but you have what you need to confirm you suspicious.

He looks to greet you, and you shove him backwards into a filing shelf.

“That’s why keep you us around, huh?” you say, momentum keeping your words going even as he shakes away the bewilderment. A toy replica of the _Destiny Ascension_ falls to the ground. “Thought I wouldn’t pick up on that?”

The other Spectre has a gun to the side of your head. They were talking when you came in, bursting through the starboard side entrance without caring, and you feel it’s sights warm on your temple.

When he speaks, it’s to her. “Ash, it’s fine.”

“Heard that one before, Shepard.” Her eyes are brown-near-black and there is no mercy in them. You want to go at him again but despite the heaving constriction in your chest you still don’t want to die, and if she killed a krogan for mouthing off she certainly won’t hesitate with you.

“Ashley.” He’s got that warning to his voice, the one that makes all his little friends bend over backwards for him, and you want to sock him just to silence it. “I have this. Give us a few minutes.” When she still doesn’t move, he adds, “trust me.”

You’re about to not care, to tear into him with witnesses aplenty, but her nose wrinkles in one direction and she tucks her rifle behind her back. “I hear anything, you’re dead Cerberus,” and then she’s out the door.

“So,” Lazarus muses when the lock seals closed. “I take it you’re mad at me for something?”

“I remember Jack,” you seethe, the words oozing out of you like black liquorish. You didn’t know what you were going to say when you came in here, but you have the truth and you’re going to make him squirm.

“I would hope so, she only left a day ago.”

“I wrote those dossiers,” you brandish. “Rasa told you it was her but I did the legwork. I _know_ what she _was_. She was broken, and you came swooping in to _save_ her.”

Now he’s finally looking, really _looking_ , and you’re not going to stop.

“That’s why you like us so much isn’t it?” Your sneer hurts your upper lip where the rent in the skin still hasn’t healed. “You like finding broken things and fixing them.”

“That’s not what this is about,” he starts, but that’s all you let him do.

“No?” You spit. “Grabbed me from a cell to keep like a fucking pet, but you’re just doing that ‘cause it’s easy? I see through you, you piece of shit. I’m not your fucking project.”

His spine is straight as he studies you, yellow lights on the wrinkles in his jacket. “You’re here because I promised.”

“Well it certainly isn’t as a crew asset,” you hiss. “What is all this for?”

He struggles out a, “you’re my responsibility.”

The scoff catches in your throat, too tight, like you’ve been swallowing glass. “Well there it is. You really get off on this shit, don’t you? Good fucking luck with that. I know you’ve got half your cronies wrapped around your little finger, but if you think I’m going to sit around and jerk off your savior complex, just ditch me at the next meteor. Would finally make your prothean friend happy.”

The door opens before you get to it, the other Spectre there where she’d been lurking, now breaking back in because orders be damned. You don’t care. It’s over, and you shoulder check her on the way out.

* * *

There are times when you can tell when you’ve done something wrong, when her mouth doesn’t bend into that little half-smile of hers, when her response is chilled as she reviews whatever you’ve been working on. It is a rule that you never know _what_ you did, how you disappointed her today—maybe you were tired this morning and took a tone with her over coffee, maybe you labeled your files in that way she hates—but seeing her scan over a datapad with a fosted disappointment is always enough bring on the yawning reminder that you will never survive without her. You know, just like you know every foul echelon of the extranet like the back of your hand: if she wasn’t watching your back, Lawson would find you within the week. If you’ve become too callous, too unpleasant to deal with, she may decide it’s not worth her time, and take her effort elsewhere.

So you supplicate. You find her when the lamps are too low and approach cautiously, circling your arms around her and pressing her nose into that spot she likes. It’s instant, the way she melts. Like she was waiting for you to do just this. And you accede, to anything, to whatever it was this time, wordless and tugging her toward the bed as you watch her confident smirk return in the dark. She’ll welcome you with acknowledging kisses, accepting your placation, holding you until uncertainty flees.

Then, when her breaths are steady beside you, you can allow the relief to wash in. You’ve earned her love, and for a moment you can pretend you won’t have to do it again.

You wake with the ghost of her hand on your inner thigh.

Wake is an inexact descriptor for you’ve been lying in your bunk for eons with the phantoms caressing in places unsolicited, but it feels like waking when you finally stand and shake them free.

The night cycle is in full swing, and you are echoingly alone at the lowest point in the Normandy. If you think—and you can’t help but think, most days you wish you could just turn it off—maybe you’re at the _highest_ point. The gravity is as artificial as it’s mission—if it simply…switched…you could suddenly be king of the world.

Pointless. The relativity of all things is a constant fucking bummer.

The emergency lights illuminate your way to Vega’s punching bag. He still doesn’t have any gloves for it, but that’s never stopped him, and may as well not stop you. The first punch feels like nothing, but everything only ever has one first. The assault breaks the skin on your hands, and your form is so distorted you feel a twist in your wrist. Then your thumb goes, snapping into the wrong position and sending a whole jolt up your arm. You keep going. You’re going to keep going, until you’re dead, until you break whatever memories of her are still on your skin.

Cortez finds you barely conscious, kneeling underneath the bag, blood smeared on Vega’s pristine equipment.

You may not have slept for three days, but you still have the wherewithal to think he shouldn’t be here this early. There is no call to the AI this time, or journey to find Lazarus. Instead, he puts one shoulder under the arm he nearly dislocated a few weeks ago, and lifts you to the steel chairs of his workstation.

“Vega’s going to find a way to blame me for that,” he says of the blood. For some reason, he’s chosen now—moving you and dropping you and getting a first-aid kit from a drawer—to decide to prattle. It’s unnerving when you’ve barely heard him speak more than three sentences, but maybe he only seemed reserved in comparison to Vega. “Somehow him getting his ass beat by Shepard 2.0 is my fault too, though he’s not as mad about that one as I think he should be. You nearly gave him a concussion.”

“Hm,” is all you deign.

“If you ask me,” he says, while dabbing medi-gel onto each of your knuckles, “you shouldn’t wake up from something like that and the only thing you have to say is ‘happens’. But Vega’s a pretty easy guy to get along with. Lets most things roll off him.”

Your thumb is now set firmly against the rest of your hand, the splint so tight you can’t move it. You don’t know if this is because Cortez has some secret skill in field medicine, or because he’s just using the kit as liberally as he can.

Staring at your hand, the white lump that’s been shaped into a perpetual fist, you ask, “why are you doing this?”

He shrugs. “A lot of people try to kill us, but it’s honestly hard to stay mad. You’re what, like two?”

“I don’t need your pity.” The snarl you meant is faded by exhaustion, a grumble against a man who isn’t intimidated.

“Too bad,” he says. “It’s what you got.”

“Go to hell,” you growl. “You, Vega, _him_ , you can all go to hell. I don’t want anyone’s sad looks, and I don’t want your help.”

“If you think it’s as simple as that, you don’t have a real good idea of what people are like.”

“People, or just him?” The gauzed hand is already starting to itch. “He’s doing it to you too, isn’t he? He did it for all is crew, that patronizing therapist bullshit. It’s obnoxious.”

He closes the kit. “You know, I think you’re way to bothered by people being nice to you. Not wanting people’s pity isn’t going to make it go away.”

“Right, because keeping me like a pathetic trophy is some great testament to human empathy.” You are tired. Not just from the hurt but bone tired, fatigue weighing you in your seat. “I just want it to stop.” If only you knew what ‘it’ was.

“Any time you like.”

Somehow you manage your way back to your bunk. Cortez could have helped you or he might’ve not, you’re not really sure either way.

* * *

“Suit up,” Lazarus says.

Somehow, you’re holding an armor plate and, more importantly, a gun. You don’t know if Cortez blabbed or Lazarus has just decided to ignore your latest threat, but he’s shoved the gear into your hands and expects you to put it on.

When you don’t move, he says, “you want to be an asset? Prove it. We go planetside in two hours.”

The realization that this is happening, he’s serious, thumps in your chest. You’re not giving him an opportunity to change his mind.

It’s just too damn bad that Kallini turns out to be hell.

Every move in the dark of the desolated and flickering alien building sets in you something deep, something that knows how far the unnaturalness runs. Asari with their secrets, with their superiority so rooted it’s a wonder they don’t walk crooked with how far they have it shoved up their asses. They may pretend their influence is pure, but you wonder how long this building has stood. How many centuries have they been corralling their dirty laundry into this cold corner of the galaxy?

A reverberation agitates the sloping concrete. Lazarus motions you down, and even though you’re rather be poised than hidden in this nest of vipers, the rumble bores again into the back of your skull, and you relent into cover. For a moment, there is only your heartbeat, and the imagined echo of your squadmates’. Then, with no warning, the sound is here a third time, close enough that you recognize it for what it is: a scream.

The Archangel mutters, “Spirits, what is that thing…”

There are no answers for that. Not you nor anyone can give. The body sliding into view stretches, twined unwillingly in horrifying ways, and there is rage in the scream that makes the other flinch, but at which you downright convulse. Only you can hear it. The call underneath. The one of pure, agonizing pain, shifting between the vocal intonations, begging for someone, anyone to make it stop. The one of someone shamed and discarded and then violated ultimately.

You do not lose your lunch after you kill the first one. Nor the second. The third, you break from the pack without them noticing, and find yourself in a girl’s room, at which point you dry heave against a cold wall and pretend not to notice the dozens of handmade ceramic pyjacks arranged in loving collections. You reappear at the Archangel’s side with your helmet back on and do not wipe away the sweat at the back of your neck.

The Justicar talks. Her daughter dies. The other one Lazarus hauls into the elevator, still screaming her sister’s name.

The ride up takes too long. It is as though the elevator’s downward journey was somehow a tenth the distance of its ascension, warping physical space around it so the asari’s crying lasts for as long as possible. Her face is in Lazarus’s shoulder, and he rubs her back, and tells her he’s so, so sorry.

The air outside tastes of death on this crumbling, stockade of a world. The asari doesn’t hug her mother. You try to think past your own mind, an endless wail still resounding inside it, as though through higher function you can avoid it like a folder you don’t want to open.

And then the Justicar is dead and there is one more bloodstain to add to the canvas.

You stare at the ground as purple washes up to touch the edge of your boot. You’ve winded up next to Lazarus, close enough to hear him mutter into his comms, “Call us a ship.”

That is the only thing that that can make you look up. “You’re leaving her here.” It’s not a question.

He gazes blankly at you. You’ve tried never to stare too long into familiar eyes, ringed brown and heavy as they, but now you can’t stop and you see the helplessness there. “She wants to stay.”

“She’s going to kill herself.” Another thing that is not a question. He heard her. He knows.

He stares at you with those despairing eyes, and doesn’t speak until Cortez says he’s coming in for a landing. There is rancor within and between you as the shuttle lifts you away from the penitential planet, follows you all the way to the hanger. Archangel disperses, as does Cortez, and you want nothing more than to wash away husk blood and the grime of indoctrination on your skin. When you return, you find that although the squad has disbanded, Lazarus is still there, gaze boring into his helmet.

“She…” He is talking to you, even as catches his own reflection in the thin sheen of glass. “I never understood her. Never.”

“S. Sam-ar-a,” you remember. The name is not right on your tongue. Five thousand sutras. One for every possible situation. The living daughter had said she shouldn’t have had to, even still. “I think she knew what was going happen. Probably as soon as she set foot there.”

He hangs his head. “She always seemed like…she knew what the right thing was, even when the rest of us didn’t. I liked that about her. Trusted she’d always know what to do.” You notice his thumb run over his dog tags, the hum of spaceflight drowning out the tinkling sound. “You were the one who came back right.”

“Me.” You check behind you, and then back to see him drop the arm with his helmet.

“You.” He rubs his face. “You know Torfan, right? Of course you do. You never shut up about all the shit you know about me.” You take offense to that. You feel like you’ve spent a lot of your time in his presence pointedly shutting up about the things know about him. “Every single solider, every _single_ person under my command…dead. And they gave me a medal. You know that stupid fire is still burning there?”

“The Shepard Memorial Fire,” you say. He glares at you. Okay, point taken.

“No cost too great. We won, after all. Then I die and I come back and I just-.” He’s got his fingers locked in his dog tags again. “Can’t do it anymore.”

When the suicide mission went out, you were hoping for just that. The Collectors needed to be destroyed and Rasa still needed Cerberus resources so you all did your part, but Rasa thought if Lazarus never came back at all, then maybe there could still be space for you in the Alliance. A sole survivor. He’d already established contact with the Council, with some of his old associates, it would be almost easy to slip into his place.

But for you, there was never any doubt he would succeed. Even with how much you hated him, the hours you’d spent pouring over his life let you know he would never let a mission fail.

That’s what make you realize what’s changed. “You can’t make sacrifices.”

He wrings his hands. “The old Shepard, he would have gutted Kai Leng and Udina before they even got started. Hell, he probably would’ve broken out of lockup eight months ago, consequences be damned. But I remember the first Normandy, what is was like to just…lose everything. I don’t want to go through that again. _Can’t_ go through it again. When I think about it I just-”

He laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound. You don’t think you’ve ever heard him laugh before, and like when you saw him with Jack, it strikes you that you nothing about him at all.

“I couldn’t do what Thane did for us. What Samara did for her daughter.” He’s still thumbing the dog tags. “You’re the only one of us who bothered to keep a spine.”

“To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have jumped in front of an assassin either,” you shrug.

“Would you have let your men die to just to win?” He asks. Silence is your only answer, and he goes on, “I just think that, this time, it won’t be some moon base, or the Council. This is the whole damn galaxy, and if it comes down that I need to choose between the Reapers and Ash, or Garrus….”

You sit. Beside him, and his forehead wrinkles slightly. You should probably tell him that he’ll make the right call, or at the very least that no one can tell what the future will bring or some hanar crap like that. But if you inherited the temperament of the original Shepard, he definitely wasn’t a well of emotional complexity, so instead you just sit there, shoulder against his. There is a beat, and a muffled thanks, and the reward of silence.

* * *

“I was thinking,” he rushes out, too fast in the pre-mission shuffle when all your concentration is on prepping your armor and keeping grenades from going off accidently. “That you could be Ji-tae. Since you ah…don’t have a preference for anything else.”

You hand is tangled in a mass of cluster grenades, and when you glance up at him, mouth slightly open, all you can manage is a, “what.”

“It’s our name,” he explains hastily. “Nobody ever calls me it so-”

“I _know_ what your first name is, jackass,” you say. “Why the hell would you call _me_ that?”

“You know, if you let me finish explaining sometime, I’d probably tell you a lot faster.” When all you do is glare at him, he continues, “it’s just that, it’s been so long since I’ve been anything but ‘Shepard’ or ‘Commander’, or occasionally ‘Shepard-Commander’. My whole adult life, just that. Ji-tae doesn’t even feel like _me_ anymore.”

“So you I get your sloppy seconds?” you ask. “Gee, thanks.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

No one’s listening, Cortez doing pre-flight checks, and the Shadow Broker giving last minute instructions to her VI before takeoff. You awkwardly go back to sifting through your own gear.

“If that’s a no, then…”

“No,” you say clumsily. “No, it’s fine. That’s fine. I don’t really care.”

The chaos and the prep outside continues, and Shepard goes back to his gear ,fiddling with a pulsar as it refuses the snap in place. There is a sheen of muck in your stomach, and you hate it. You shouldn’t care about this additional, stupid thing he’s said to you that doesn’t matter, and even if it did is should make you pleased, not queasy.

“Do you think,” you say eventually, because you need to give voice, “anyone’s going to actually call me that?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. ‘Time’s a curious equalizer’.” When your eyebrows shoot up, he grins in your direction. “ _The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet_ , right? I heard you say something a while ago that sounded like it was from something, so I looked it up.”

“Oh.” It feels odd, like an invasion of privacy. Probably not justified if you were trying to keep a two hundred year old book a secret, but still.

“I liked it,” Shepard says. “I don’t read a lot, but it was actually pretty easy to get through.”

You grunt. “I haven’t read anything since being drafted.”

“Drafted?” he asks.

You roll your eyes. “By you?”

“Oh. Right, I guess you could call it that.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Any reason why not?”

You used to chew through whatever you could find, old sci-fi classics, the latest hot garbage on the top fifty, it didn’t matter as long as it kept you from thinking. “If you’ll recall, one of the terms of my release is that I’m not allowed any personal device which gives me remote access to the extranet.”

“You _did_ try to crack EDI’s firewall using the radio in the bathrooms.”

That was actually just to stop it from playing an elcor cover of _My Heart Will Go On_. “It was worth a try.”

“There’s _no_ other way to read something except by ripping it off the extranet?”

“You telling me you have a horde of penny paperbacks stuffed in under your bunk you’d be willing to share?” When Shepard says nothing, you snort, “didn’t think so.”

But. The annoyance doesn’t fit right inside you, and as you drift closer to Horizon, you watch him from the corner of your eye. He wears Thessia like a second skin, hanging around his cheekbones and the tightness in his frown, and you know the screams he’s hearing because you hear them too. Despite the two thousand year long deception you’d uncovered there, the bitter rage that had once let you see through their self-righteousness has fizzled away, like Minagen through the bottom of an uncoated cannister. Instead, you now have ghosts in your head. You have ghosts, and other things Rasa never prepared you for.

Like the voice of a teenage girl, fizzling over the comms, telling you to turn back now.

“Lawson…” you mutter.

“Miranda’s sister?” Shepard asks. “What’s she doing here?”

Kai Leng, Lawson, a nemesis falling from a roof as a harvester flies overhead. All of this is compounding, and you’d thought you’d been stripped clean of Cerberus as soon as Rasa birthed you from that tank, but now you’re back in its storm. Hooks you didn’t know they had in you yank your every limb, twitching your rifle at sudden noises, spinning around corners you’ve already checked. And then Lawson, the real Lawson, speaks out of a crackling emergency broadcast and your innards contract.

“Hey,” Shepard says, shaking you slightly. The marionette strings snap your rifle against your chest. “You okay?”

“We need to get this over with,” you tell him through gritted teeth.

Over with. You don’t know how this ends with survival unless you leave now or catch Lawson off her guard. You have your helmet tinted dark across your face but she’ll take one look at you and she’ll _know_ , because you can’t hide from those eyes, only run. Rasa trained you and taught you and kept you both safe, but there were two of you against the forces of the Alliance and Cerberus combined. It was always success to survive one more day, stay quiet just a little longer, always with the promise that your chance was right around the corner.

The facility powers on, and you wonder why you ever thought you could change anything. Slaughter without purpose, death without blood, you shoot down monsters but the there is still the certainty that something much worse is waiting for you, and the Shadow Broker side-eyes the way your hands shake. You hate the place where the water drains. It reminds you of the tank.

A ladder is all that separates you from her and Leng and whoever else is and charge, and when you reach her she is

Dying.

She lies in Shepard’s arms, a thin stream of blood from the corner of her mouth and talks to her sister like they’re the only people in the world. The first instinct, the one that this is some sort of trap, doesn’t hold under scrutiny, and you stare dumbly as Lawson reaches up to tenderly touch his face.

You find yourself moving closer. There should be something you can say, to reveal yourself, to bring closure, to maybe even gloat that you will go on where she will not, but then her head rolls back, and she is still.

Her voice plays on the broadcast. You are left with no one in the world who can hurt you. This time, Shepard helps the grieving sister into his arms, and takes her with.

* * *

“She was…” you say as the UT-47 rattles with atmosphere. “Invincible. It never occurred to us that she could be stopped.”

“She always tried to give that impression, yeah.” He does not question the _us_ , and you do not say the things about Lawson you want to say. You allow each other small mercies.

Maybe, there was no us. Maybe Rasa realized Miranda was just as mortal as everyone else, and the fear you thought you saw in her was merely your own she chose to reflect back. Maybe the reason we tell children ghost stories is the same reason we remind them that we’ll never die.

* * *

“Ji-tae,” he grumbles, disappointed, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Runnin’ away from home, Ma,” you say drily.

Sparks flick against the escape pod, the casing hard against tampering, but once you’re inside it will bow to your will. You keep trying to use your omni-tool as a screwdriver, but you really need a Phillips head, and each defeat only lasts a half minute before you take another stab and think maybe _this_ time it’ll work.

“You know,” he says, folding his arms, “even if you do get that working, EDI’s not going to open the door for you.”

“I know.” You hiss as a spark lands on your bare forearm.

“Those pods don’t actually have their own controls. They’re designed to send out a distress signal and wait for rescue.”

“I _know_.” Your teeth grind in concentration, omni-blade slipping again.

“Then why are you-”

“Because what else am I going to fucking do?” You stand and spin to face him, throwing the useless blowtorch aside. “Rasa is _alive_. She’s sitting on the Citadel right this second and I haven’t been doing a damn thing for three months. I should be-! Gah! Fuck!” You kick, and send the torch skittering.

He watches it go, unamused. “And why do you need to kill her so bad?”

“Because she left me to die, because she betrayed me, because she raised me, take your pick.” You begin to pace, but now your foot hurts and you hobble in the middle of the shuttle bay. “But I’ve just been _sitting_ , and if I’m not going to kill you, then the only one left is her.”

“Nice to know you’ve gotten over the whole killing me thing,” he remarks flatly. “Do you actually want to kill her?”

“No.” Left, pain. Left, pain. “But I should.”

“But do you want to?” he repeats.

“I said _no_ -”

He gets in your way. Right there, in your path, and grabs you by both shoulders. “Then don’t.” You choose not see him. “Ji-tae, listen to me. She’s going to spend the rest of her life rotting in a cell, she can’t control you anymore. You are _never_ going to see her again. Do you understand me?”

You close your eyes. You don’t believe him. Not when you woke up less than an hour ago with her breath still on your neck. You shake your head.

“Hey, look at me.” Still you refuse. He gives you a slight shake. “Look at me.”

You open them, slightly. “She’s still here. Always. Every thing I am, everything I do, it’s because she made me that way.”

“If that’s the case, then killing her won’t undo that.” You stare ahead at your matching face, whose expression is kind and holds something for you that you only ever thought you saw in Rasa’s. “She’s millions of kilometers away right now. If that hasn’t stopped it from hurting, then the poison’s too damn deep, Ji-tae. When-” His voice cracks slightly. “When something’s been taking from you, forever, there’s no easy fix.”

You know what he’s talking about. You’ve memorized the records of every person he lost; Alenko, Urdnot, Taylor, Goto, Krios, Samara, Lawson… You don’t know how it feels. The only person you’ve ever lost is better off gone.

“I just…” You feel sick again, or maybe there’s something else wrong with your head. “I just want it to stop.”

He hugs you. Your body goes stiff, but you don’t fight him. Not this time. “I know. I know. Me too.” And then he promises, “soon.”

* * *

The remaining days before the world ends you spend lying in your bunk. It’s only when Shepard comes back from the Cerberus base, shaking and empty handed, that the news spreads throughout the Normandy, and you haul yourself to a standing position.

“Earth. Never been.” Everyone either ignores you or shoots you a distasteful look, which is usually what happens when you talk. Only Vega refuses silence while everyone gathers jitterly in corners, waiting while Hackett and Shepard disappear into the war room, and offers to go blow off steam. You frown, “I really hope you don’t mean a rematch.”

“Hah, nah.” He slaps you on the shoulder. “Old fashion way.”

So off you, he, and Cortez stand at the starboard side window, slightly buzzed, and behold thousands of ships gather above a burning planet. You’re still warm in the fingers by the time you touch down and realize that you’ve never bean to Earth, and you may never be here again.

The air tastes like burned things. You don’t want to think too heavily on what those things might be. Every second compounds the sinking in your chest, and you realize no one’s going to stop this. All those times you thought you could do better, that you could lead humanity out of the tangles of galactic politics to triumph—laughable. It takes seeing person after person crumble to realize no one can do this. This is your last ditch effort to a hopeless end, and even Shepard doesn’t realize it.

Then there is the screeching, the yell of distress in your comms, and you gawk as the UT-47 crashes and burns in an arc over your heads.

“Cortez!” Shepard shouts over the line, barely heard between Vega’s _shit shit shit shit_ , but all you can do is stand and stare at where the blue shuttle disappeared.

You aren’t going to win. There is lead in your blood and your bones and you will not win.

Then,

“I’m fine Commander,” in your ear, and your heart starts once again.

Only for a second though. As Shepard pours instructions to wait for evac, you look at where the UT-47 disappeared, jaw slowly clenching.

“Ji-tae, come on,” he says when you don’t move. He notices where your helmet points. “Normandy’s coming for him, he’s going to be fine. We’re the ones who have to get our asses out of here.”

You think of Cortez, whose specialization is in emergency transport and communications. You think of the sidearm he keeps under his seat. You think of the last twenty marauders you met, who took a heatsink a piece to take down.

“Dammit!” is the last thing you hear before you’re over the closest barrier, and then Shepard’s and Vega’s shouts recede behind you entirely.

“I’m going to need your coordinates,” you say into your comms as you run through sections of twisted rebar.

“Shepard?” Cortez coughs, startled to be back in demand. “I told you I’m fine-”

“Not Shepard. He’s unfortunately on his way to get sucked into a giant laser. Now give me your damn coordinates.”

There is a pause. He does.

You find him with his leg crushed in between the pilot’s seat and the door of the shuttle, husk hanging around his neck as it tears into him. He shoves his pistol into its head, and it splatters back, falling into the co-pilot’s seat. There’s a second one hanging from the UT-47’s roof, and before he can re-aim, you shoot it to pieces.

He jerks back to avoid it, and twists his leg in a way that definitely can’t be good by the bark he makes. Keeping your rifle at the ready, the smoke concealing what you know is there, you approach the half open cockpit.

“Push back on the console, I’ll leverage the door. Got it?” He takes a second, acknowledging that you really are there, that you’re really not Shepard, but you are going to get this thing off him. He nods. “Good. Three, two, one-”

Metal groans, screaming like it’s alive, iron and copper and something unpleasant. Your boots slip in the ash that has been building on the streets for months, war grinding down skyscrapers until the planet finally chocked its last breath. Both you and Cortez wheeze with exertion, but then his leg pops free, blood slicking metal until it’s just wet enough.

“Shit,” he says when he puts first weight on it. You slide an arm under his shoulder, and he adds a, “thanks.”

“We need to move,” is all you reply. Even now you hear the strange chattering growl of a brute echoing somewhere to your right. “Normandy has our location?”

“Told them six minutes ago.”

“We’ll get to a clear pickup.” You scan the horizon, eyes landing on rubble flat enough to drop the bay door. With a jerk of your chin you point, “there. Update Joker. We’ll be there in four.”

You aren’t. Each of you firing with one hand makes slow going, and only half way to rendezvous, a prickle goes up your spine as you hear an approaching scream, trailed by the warp of air. Without even considering, you bring the both of you behind an overturned car, and meld into silence.

It paces past. Long toes scrape on pavement whenever it forgoes its charge, pitifully creaking another howl. It will not see you. It cannot see you. The familiar wave of revulsion rises in you, and suddenly it is not just about the limited ammunition or the manpower, but if one more of them glowers at you with those profane sockets, you will die from its sight alone.

Slap. Slap. The warble of atmosphere. You wait two more teleports, the cry fading in the distance, before you finally pull Cortez to his feet.

“This is really hell, isn’t it?” he asks when you reach the top of your destination, peering over tanks burning in the distance and highways choked with bodies. You say nothing. He knows the answer.

The Normandy doesn’t arrive. Ten. Fifteen. The two of you take potshots at any ground forces that comes close, and each count the seconds individually. There is the sound of a banshee, you think the same one, until you hear its song joined by two more. You and Cortez look at each other.

But then the engines roar. The Normandy swings into view over a shattered construct of glass, turning as it blasts your eardrums until your can see its hatch lower.

You help Cortez across the gap but- “Vega?” He’s there, covered in blood but still reaching to help Cortez hobble in. “Where’s Shepard?”

The grim line across his dirt-spattered face speaks before he does. “He made it in.”

You turn. The Crucible is firing a beam of hot blue into the earth, and the people who were supposed to make it up there are standing around a broken corner of London instead. “You _left_ him?”

There is a laugh, raw and pointed with uncovered self-hatred, and he says, “you did first, _Bandito_.”

You’ve wasted too much time already.

“Hey! It’s too late man!” calls after you, followed by Cortez’s agreement, but you run away from him a second time, across no-man’s land, to where annihilation has its heart. You run until the Normandy shoots off into the atmosphere behind you, until you’re alone on the doomed homeworld.

You make it half a kilometer before the Crucible explodes.

* * *

“Hey. Clone. Help me move this.”

You gape, eyes hollowed, crevassed by dehydration as they blink out at her. “My name is Ji-tae.”

Jack’s disgust might have been harsher if her face wasn’t already taut with exhaustion. “Whatever. Just get over here.”

You do. He won’t be under this bit of emaciated Citadel either, but you do.

When it existed, the Citadel was 44.7 kilometers long, and weighed 7.11 billion metric tons. The two of you cover 13.88 cubic kilometers on average, foraging through debris that have spread out over 190 kilometers of uninhabited island at the very least, and have lost at least 23% of their mass on entry of Earth’s atmosphere.

Humans have been known to survive in collapsed mines and buildings for weeks or years, our bodies rivaling the krogan when it comes to rebounding from near-fatal injuries, a strange combination of adrenaline responses and elasticity of the bones. But. Fresh water ran out days ago. There is no steady stream of supplies for any survivors under fallen London.

Her biotics curl metal as the tendons in your arms provide aligning force, and you move the space debris, finding nothing underneath but the fried remains of organic matter sticking to the side of it. A lot of the Citadel has been like this. You think about Rasa, dead during the first attack. Later liquefied. You sit down.

You refilled your canteen yesterday from a burst basement pipe. It tastes like mud and whatever’s poisoning the ground since the Reapers landed. As you drink, you hope you didn’t come all this way to die from cholera. Wouldn’t that be the perfect end to a perfect story.

Jack sits too, and you pass her the bottle. You didn’t mean to find her in the chaos following what no one could quite believe was victory, but after the initial ecstatic yells—the back slapping, the wandering through the yelling soldiers like a stranger—the giddiness had worn off, and people either started to look for orders or just sit down and cry. And Jack, comparatively, was such so damn _loud_ , you couldn’t possibly _not_ listen to her. She was threatening at every Alliance officer she could get her hands on, most of whom were only ranking because every man above them was dead.

It wasn’t surprising she didn’t get results. The general consensus on the mention of Shepard was to hang one’s head and not trust yourself to give your thoughts voice, incase it made such belief true. This was a man who was to be honored now, to be thanked for his sacrifice, and people prefer their heroes dead. And to stay dead. (The day his “survival” was announced to the galaxy, vandalism on the Shepard Memorial Flame went from a yearly occurrence to a monthly.)

When it became clear that a search party was hours, or maybe days away, Jack went off into no-man’s land without a look back. If it would be said you were matched in your ill-advised ways, that you were a pair of ghosts walking off to your doom, you resent that sentiment. _You_ at the very least, stole some rations and a bit of medi-gel before going after her.

“He’s dead,” you tell her when she hands you your canteen back.

She swirls some mud in her mouth and spits. “Yeah? Then why are you still here?”

“What the hell else am I going to do?”

This is the only real question left in the universe. You have nothing, and you’ve brought unneeded deaths down on your own head. You saw what happened to those ships still in orbit when the Crucible self-destructed: they fell, hundreds of them, like and entire flock of birds each with an arrow in its heart. The combat VIs shorted, the comms broke down. If you were to guess, it would everything based on Relay—and, conversely, Reaper—technology that decided to give up the ghost, but you have no one around to regale your delightful theory to.

The gist is, you hauled Cortez across half a battlefield—his leg bleeding, his teeth gritting beside you, away from his one chance at cover—to put him in ship to die. The Normandy is gone, but if you’d just let him be, Cortez wouldn’t have had to join them.

The last thing you’d said to Vega was to blame him. The last thing you’d said to Shepard was nothing.

“Oh quit your bitching,” Jack tells you. “You moved half the shit I have.”

You shrug. “I think I’ve done pretty well for a two year old.”

The full weight of that hits you. There are thirty years of your life that simply do not exist, and you will spend the remainder of them on a defeated planet with a woman who hates you. Unless of course you decide to turn back now and return to the humanity that also hates you. What did you ever really want? And not Rasa, but you, you who was so tied in the fear and the glorious hope that there was never a middle ground. No just surviving. No dirty but potable water.

“Would you say you’re and expert in things of the fucked up nature?” you posit.

“Do you think you’re ever going to talk like a fucking human being?” she mocks right back. Then she leans against a piece of road. “But yeah. I’ve seen some shit.”

“I was sleeping with the woman who woke me from the tank.” You can feel her attention, but she does not raise her brows, does not cover you with those drippings of pity you so loathe. “We were. Partners. She said I was going to save humanity, that I was her…hope. And she’d _say_ that but, she’d always be one step away from deserting. She’d make me feel like I’d failed her, was _currently_ failing her and I’d try to keep her from leaving with whatever she wanted. Sex. Promises. Whatever I thought was going to keep her close.”

Saying it aloud makes you realize she knew. She knew what she was doing the whole time. How many times had you seen her play her subtle machinations against a mark, provide just enough details to let them fill in the gaps, and never realized when she showed the same face to you?

Jack whistles. “You’re right, that is fucked up. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been there done that. Why are you telling me this?”

“It’s easier when it’s someone who doesn’t care.” The sun is setting. It’s funny how it still does that, despite everything. “We should go back.”

“ _We_? You can fuck off if you want. Why the hell should _I_ go back?”

You are thirsty, you are hungry, but most of all you’re tired of this. “I don’t know. You want me to give some big damn speech about your kids or how you have so much to live for and shit like that? Do I _look_ like Shepard to you? Don’t answer that.” You roll your neck and burn your retina against the sun. “Just…come back.”

She spits at you, yells at the rising moon, flings rubble around with her biotics, and cries maybe twice but she does, eventually, come back.

* * *

“Jack! Jack!”

It’s one of the tall, noisy children, you don’t remember which one. He’s running at you as soon as you’re within sight of the circle of tanks, his arms about his head as though you’re going somehow miss him and change course. She sighs, and the two of you keep at a steady, plodding pace.

He keeps yelling, all the way to you. “Jack, they found him!”

Only then do you run.

* * *

Hospital is generous.

Alive is more.

When you first see him he’s like a long raisin who’s been given the highest security as no one can do anything but slap on medi-gel and pray someone finds a medic. By day four they know he’ll make it. By week four, he looks almost human. You spend that time lurking outside his tent, threatening anyone that if they so much as ask you for a spare part, you’ll skin them alive.

Then he’s awake and Jack is inside the tent. If anyone can hear her cry, it won’t be from lack of effort on your part. The minor rockslide you cause during their reunion only causes some surface-level vehicle damage.

When she’s gone, and they’ve had their time together, and you’ve given him a minute to get his bearings, only then do you see him. There is no cowardice in you. How could there be? There is no room left for it.

“Hey,” he says. It’s soft, though his face is still in a state of perpetual peeling.

You stand in the doorway.

His smile falters. “Don’t do that. Not now.”

So you come. You kneel because chairs are in short supply and the hospital they’re going to move him to hasn’t been cleared of its own ceiling quite yet. You kneel and you grip the edge of the bed and you don’t let everything overwhelm you.

“I kept wanting to say,” he stutters, still medi-gel woozy. Still only hours since his first consciousness. “And I just kept not bringing it up but. I want you to meet our mom.”

“Our mom,” you repeat.

“Yeah. When you ran I just kept thinking,” he rambles. “That I want you to meet her, and I think she’ll like you.”

It’s too much. Your last sutra to yourself folds, and you let it all wash over you because you failed. You failed Rasa, you failed him, you failed yourself. You look down at the burned hand on the sheet. “They’re all dead. The Normandy they’re all-”

“They’re not.” He says it so firmly, it startles you out of the beginnings of your confession. He says it as fact, a fact he has been considering for a long time. “Not them. I know they made it out.”

And for the first time—is this really the first time you’ve actually listened?—you understand why everyone believes him. Why, when he says you’re going to win, people are willing to give in to their faith.

You start to cry. You rest your head on the bed and cry, and he says nothing but puts a burned hand on the back your head. Even that must hurt him, but still he does, and you cry because you are alive. You are alive on a dead world, but if he tells you it’s still alive you might just believe him. There are years that have not yet been stolen from you, and for the first time they’re truly yours, and no one can have them again.


End file.
